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In Europe we have this hope to find/create a Silicon Valley to compete against US. The problem is, we simply can't. We don't have, as well said before, the "Sil

by bontoJR 12y ago

In Europe we have this hope to find/create a Silicon Valley to compete against US. The problem is, we simply can't. We don't have, as well said before, the "Siliconvallish" investor. We can keep trying, but it's a culture problem, we need to change that, then maybe we can try to compete. Silicon Valley is not about ideas or just tech-companies, is about investors and culture. In Europe experimenting is very very difficult, I worked on a project involving big data, predictions and very advanced live stuff that at the moment are hot in SV, but in Europe investors look not interested or ready to support this field. Another huge problem is the poor ability of European investors in following the tech-trend. 6 months ago I did a presentation about a product I was working on, looking for fundings, it was for one of the biggest VC/Incubator (focusing on medtech, green energy and hi-tech) in Switzerland and at the of the presentation I have been asked by the president what "a phone notification is" and "what is bluetooth LE", so I spent my QA time answering basic questions about the current technology instead about the product I was working on. I know not all European VCs have a similar mindset, but the general importance order for an European VC is: intellectual property protection, amount of money required to release, high market barriers looking for no short-term competition and, lastly, shipping time. An American investor doesn't care too much about competition, as long as the company provides a far better service (with a clear real advantage) this is not an issue, IP is important, but only if the product gains traction and goes mainstream (so it means $ that mean patents), the amount of money as well is not an issue, with so many VCs you can manage to get all necessary fundings if the product is valid, so what really matter is entering in the market as soon as possible with something that is good enough. These are just few examples I faced, but there are many other differences...

RyJones 12y ago
Every area in the US that isn't the Valley tries to claim it has, or is working on, an equivalent. They are mostly where you are in terms of replicating the valley.
- bontoJR 12y ago
  I always say, if you want to replicate the Valley you need to steal Valley's investors, but I don't see any valid reason for them to leave... :)
  - RyJones 12y ago
    Agreed. You need the people to take the risks. Now, please excuse me while I fashion coconut husks into headphones and wait for my planes to land.
M8 12y ago
"Something of something" is never really that.
spdy 12y ago
Thats exactly how it is. I wish Europe had more "ok lets try it"-money and the funny thing, every politician is complaining about why we don't build the next Google/Facebook etc. Because you have to fund 50-100 companies and let them grow to achieve that without a valid business model of "how will you earn money?"
- antocv 12y ago
  This "how will you earn money" and its follow up "You honestly think people would spend hours upon hours of their free time infront of a keyboard and screen and doing what was it you said building boxes and stuff with lego like pieces!? Why would anyone play games thats not productive". In general, entertainment, never passes these nay-sayers.
bitL 12y ago
With rare exceptions, Germany is like 5-10 years behind US in tech. Imagine how bad is it in other countries... It's not even funny, Europe is completely losing it.
- davidw 12y ago
  You really can't make such sweeping statements, though, they don't make sense, thanks to the internet. I've met people doing plenty of advanced stuff here in Italy. And plenty of others who are not really doing interesting things. Same in the US, though.
  - bitL 12y ago
    They are unfortunately exceptions and will never reach proportions of US corps due to not having access to "free money" like in the US via VCs (and also crazy tax rules in EU). When you talk to actual German entrepreneurs, many of them say that "first I raised all the money myself and then the bank was willing to lend me a similar amount with the money I raised as a collateral". So either you get money by political connections (which means you will be operating a China-style buddy company and not a competitive one), or you'd have to bootstrap it yourself with slow growth and high probability somebody in a more agile country with a better access to capital will copy your idea and squeeze you out etc.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  ORLY? In what field? People can pay stuff online directly with their bank details in Germany, no middle man (read, paypal) needed, and cheques are pretty much history. How fast are the quickest trains in Germany compared to the USA? Yes, some traditional companies are way behind in technology, but newsflash, there are a lot of companies like that in the USA as well
  - llcoolv 12y ago
    On the other hand when you see those ridiculous spreadsheets that Deutsche Bank uses for 2-step authentication to the e-banking you feel like in a shite 60s spy movie. When you actually log in it feels like the 90s though. And 80% of German people seem to go with tradition/history even when it is not really rational. Really makes me wonder how the two core components of the German value system - Tradition and Pragmatism - conflict each other in such situations and how they are becoming less and less compatible with every passing day.
NicoJuicy 12y ago
It's not just that. Europe has a more "private" culture... While some American companies puts "everything" in the open, Europe discusses and gets clients more "privately"... We have a lot of big companies, but almost none of them contributes to opensource for example. Some SMB's do this (adapting the american way?), but no big businesess.
- bontoJR 12y ago
  This is a current trend, I don't see a problem to have closed source, Microsoft built an empire with closed source-code and solutions, nobody complained with it. Now we are in the sharing economy era, so it makes sense to open when possible. The big 3 problems in Europe are the lack of investors a "Siliconvallish" mind, the lack of a certain amount of money for so called "experimental" technologies and REAL exit-strategies opportunities. Why I pointed these 3 factors? Having a right investor believing in hi-tech and experimental products, you get the money to start is also someone that bring the right kind of network. With the second factor you can scale, scaling in Europe is VERY expensive (different languages, VAT, cultures, etc...) and the amount of money required is very high. The third factor is required to get the first and the second one, we don't have a working acquisition schema. Investors are too scare to put money on hi-tech in Europe just because exits are REALLY difficult. In the Valley, if your company has a great product, you can end up bought after just 6 months, in Europe this is extremely rare. That's point of view, I would real like to get some statistics about it and write an article, if you know a good and reliable place where I can find some valid data, they are welcomed.
toyg 12y ago
The problem with investment culture is twofold. 1) A lot of European money is Old Money, as in really old. You don't get to hold on that much money for hundreds of years without being on the conservative side when it comes to overly-risky investments. 2) Effective redistributive policies in the richest Northern countries have historically reduced the concentration of money to the benefit of society as a whole, but they kept low the number of people with "money to burn", a requirement for bootstrapping a healthy VC ecosystem. As a "leftie" myself, I honestly wouldn't know how to fix this without screwing up a lot of other (arguably more important) elements. Southern countries didn't redistribute as much but their elites tend to "run with the till" as soon as they can, which obviously does not help investments at any level. Overall, I think trying to ape SV is a waste of time; each country or district should try to leverage its own cultural elements that can bring success, which might not include the requirement for VC backing.
- solve 12y ago
  > Overall, I think trying to ape SV is a waste of time; each country or district should try to leverage its own cultural elements that can bring success This way of thinking is so terribly wrong. Early-stage investment is absolutely crucial to tech startups. It is not "copying silicon valley" to say that early stage investors are crucial, any more than saying that having snow or mountains is crucial to creating a ski resort. Same for many other factors. No more excuses. No more "not invented here syndrome" of cities saying that they shouldn't copy successful parts of silicon valley, just because they don't want to feel like imitators. This attitude that every city can be special in their own way while ignoring what really matters is hurting founders.
  - toyg 12y ago
    > Early-stage investment is absolutely crucial Yeah but it's not written in stone that such backing should come from VC companies similar to the ones operating in SV. If capital is not distributed in the same way as in SV, there is no point trying to aggregate and invest it the way SV does.
    - 12y ago

by bontoJR 12y ago

RyJones 12y ago

Every area in the US that isn't the Valley tries to claim it has, or is working on, an equivalent. They are mostly where you are in terms of replicating the valley.

bontoJR 12y ago
I always say, if you want to replicate the Valley you need to steal Valley's investors, but I don't see any valid reason for them to leave... :)
- RyJones 12y ago
  Agreed. You need the people to take the risks. Now, please excuse me while I fashion coconut husks into headphones and wait for my planes to land.

M8 12y ago

"Something of something" is never really that.

spdy 12y ago

Thats exactly how it is. I wish Europe had more "ok lets try it"-money and the funny thing, every politician is complaining about why we don't build the next Google/Facebook etc. Because you have to fund 50-100 companies and let them grow to achieve that without a valid business model of "how will you earn money?"

antocv 12y ago
This "how will you earn money" and its follow up "You honestly think people would spend hours upon hours of their free time infront of a keyboard and screen and doing what was it you said building boxes and stuff with lego like pieces!? Why would anyone play games thats not productive". In general, entertainment, never passes these nay-sayers.

bitL 12y ago

With rare exceptions, Germany is like 5-10 years behind US in tech. Imagine how bad is it in other countries... It's not even funny, Europe is completely losing it.

davidw 12y ago
You really can't make such sweeping statements, though, they don't make sense, thanks to the internet. I've met people doing plenty of advanced stuff here in Italy. And plenty of others who are not really doing interesting things. Same in the US, though.
- bitL 12y ago
  They are unfortunately exceptions and will never reach proportions of US corps due to not having access to "free money" like in the US via VCs (and also crazy tax rules in EU). When you talk to actual German entrepreneurs, many of them say that "first I raised all the money myself and then the bank was willing to lend me a similar amount with the money I raised as a collateral". So either you get money by political connections (which means you will be operating a China-style buddy company and not a competitive one), or you'd have to bootstrap it yourself with slow growth and high probability somebody in a more agile country with a better access to capital will copy your idea and squeeze you out etc.
raverbashing 12y ago
ORLY? In what field? People can pay stuff online directly with their bank details in Germany, no middle man (read, paypal) needed, and cheques are pretty much history. How fast are the quickest trains in Germany compared to the USA? Yes, some traditional companies are way behind in technology, but newsflash, there are a lot of companies like that in the USA as well
- llcoolv 12y ago
  On the other hand when you see those ridiculous spreadsheets that Deutsche Bank uses for 2-step authentication to the e-banking you feel like in a shite 60s spy movie. When you actually log in it feels like the 90s though. And 80% of German people seem to go with tradition/history even when it is not really rational. Really makes me wonder how the two core components of the German value system - Tradition and Pragmatism - conflict each other in such situations and how they are becoming less and less compatible with every passing day.

NicoJuicy 12y ago

It's not just that. Europe has a more "private" culture... While some American companies puts "everything" in the open, Europe discusses and gets clients more "privately"... We have a lot of big companies, but almost none of them contributes to opensource for example. Some SMB's do this (adapting the american way?), but no big businesess.

bontoJR 12y ago
This is a current trend, I don't see a problem to have closed source, Microsoft built an empire with closed source-code and solutions, nobody complained with it. Now we are in the sharing economy era, so it makes sense to open when possible. The big 3 problems in Europe are the lack of investors a "Siliconvallish" mind, the lack of a certain amount of money for so called "experimental" technologies and REAL exit-strategies opportunities. Why I pointed these 3 factors? Having a right investor believing in hi-tech and experimental products, you get the money to start is also someone that bring the right kind of network. With the second factor you can scale, scaling in Europe is VERY expensive (different languages, VAT, cultures, etc...) and the amount of money required is very high. The third factor is required to get the first and the second one, we don't have a working acquisition schema. Investors are too scare to put money on hi-tech in Europe just because exits are REALLY difficult. In the Valley, if your company has a great product, you can end up bought after just 6 months, in Europe this is extremely rare. That's point of view, I would real like to get some statistics about it and write an article, if you know a good and reliable place where I can find some valid data, they are welcomed.

toyg 12y ago

The problem with investment culture is twofold. 1) A lot of European money is Old Money, as in really old. You don't get to hold on that much money for hundreds of years without being on the conservative side when it comes to overly-risky investments. 2) Effective redistributive policies in the richest Northern countries have historically reduced the concentration of money to the benefit of society as a whole, but they kept low the number of people with "money to burn", a requirement for bootstrapping a healthy VC ecosystem. As a "leftie" myself, I honestly wouldn't know how to fix this without screwing up a lot of other (arguably more important) elements. Southern countries didn't redistribute as much but their elites tend to "run with the till" as soon as they can, which obviously does not help investments at any level. Overall, I think trying to ape SV is a waste of time; each country or district should try to leverage its own cultural elements that can bring success, which might not include the requirement for VC backing.

solve 12y ago
> Overall, I think trying to ape SV is a waste of time; each country or district should try to leverage its own cultural elements that can bring success This way of thinking is so terribly wrong. Early-stage investment is absolutely crucial to tech startups. It is not "copying silicon valley" to say that early stage investors are crucial, any more than saying that having snow or mountains is crucial to creating a ski resort. Same for many other factors. No more excuses. No more "not invented here syndrome" of cities saying that they shouldn't copy successful parts of silicon valley, just because they don't want to feel like imitators. This attitude that every city can be special in their own way while ignoring what really matters is hurting founders.
- toyg 12y ago
  > Early-stage investment is absolutely crucial Yeah but it's not written in stone that such backing should come from VC companies similar to the ones operating in SV. If capital is not distributed in the same way as in SV, there is no point trying to aggregate and invest it the way SV does.
  - 12y ago